Fra Angelico, the familiar appellation of one of the most celebrated of the early Italian painters, born at Mugello, Tuscany, in 1387, died in Rome about 1455. At the age of 20 he entered the monastery at San Domenico, near Fiesole, where he took the cloistral name of Giovanni da Fiesole. Previous to this time, according to Vasari, he had borne the name of Giovanni Guido di Mugello, and according to others that of Santi Tosini. Here he passed the remainder of his days in the devout discharge of his religious duties and the pursuit of his art. From the beauty of his angels and glorified saints he was called by his countrymen il beato (the blessed) and anigelico (the angelic). He painted only sacred subjects, would never accept money for his pictures, and never commenced them without prayer. He visited Rome at the command of Nicholas V. to decorate the papal chapel. The pope offered to make him archbishop of Florence, a dignity which his humility would not permit him to accept, but which he succeeded in procuring for a brother monk.

He painted frescoes in his own monastery and in the church of Santa Maria Novella at Florence, and numerous easel pictures, of which the Louvre possesses a noble specimen, the " Coronation of the Virgin." In many details of art he was excelled by his contemporaries; but, in the language of Mrs. Jameson, '"the expression of ecstatic faith and hope, or serene contemplation, has never been placed before us as in his pictures."